TopoFusion - on a Mac, in BootCamp and Parallels

[bmike-vt]

Moved to a Mac from a Dell Mobile Workstation, and was worried that I'd lose my ability to run Topofusion Pro.
I BootCamp'd Windows7 for some CAD and accounting software that I use, and am on a trial of Parallels7.

TF runs in BootCamp, and it runs in a virtual machine using the BootCamp partition.
Pretty unreal, as I feel I've entered Inception territory here, a dream within a dream within a dream (or an OS running on an OS on a virtual machine).


TopoFusion, Mac, BootCamp, Parallels7 by mbeganyi, on Flickr


TopoFusion, Mac, BootCamp, Parallels7 by mbeganyi, on Flickr

Will test it this week, and see if I can transfer to GPS and back (pretty sure it will work in BootCamp, will see how it goes in Parallels).

[AZTtripper]

So you think it's worth running the Windows emulator programs on Mac in order to run Windows programing?

As I recall you replied to my post about running mapping programs on my wife's Mac. She really likes the Mac but the Apple guys didn't sound to hip on the emulators. Thing is she isn't happy with the Garmin mapping for Mac program.

And like I said the Apple guy, granted that was at Best Buy, didn't think it made sense to run a program to run a program.

She did get the one year of classes with the Apple store I'll have her ask about this at the next lesson. I do think she would rather use TF or even the Windows version of the Garmin program worked better for what she is doing.

I also will be in the market for something new someday and at this point I feel that I am PC bound do to my need to run TF. If I could know for sure that TF would run well on a Mac that would be nice to have the option.

[bmike-vt]

I'll do some more testing. I'm running a MacBookPro, 8g ram. I don't foresee a problem running it when booted into W7 directly. Did some initial 3d views there, will import some routes and do some elevation calcs, etc.
You can dual boot the new macs, if you setup BootCamp.
When you do that, you have a PC with an Apple logo.

I'm setup this way because I tired of my Dell, and most of my work software is available on either system now.
I still need access to a 3d CAD/CAM package. It runs fine in BootCamp (booting up Windows7 like it was a PC), and it works well in a virtual machine.

Note that you aren't running an emulator when running BootCamp. You need a full license of Windows to install.
When you want to boot from within OSX, you'll need to install Parallels or VMware Fusion. I think both can let you use your already installed BootCamp partition as the 'install' of Windows7.

If you don't need anything more than office programs, you can skip the whole BootCamp thing and install Windows inside a virtual machine like Parallels or VMware. You have to give the virtual machine a chunk of RAM, so the more the better. I have mine set to let the vm use 3 gigs. More than enough for W7, plenty for most applications, and just enough for my 3d software for review / 2d work.

As I want the option to deal with 3d models, and didn't know how the performance was going to be - I opted for a full install on a disk partition.
Works great... and if I need to do some heavy lifting (3d modeling, etc) I can restart and hold down the option key to boot into W7. Or I can start up my virtual machine and print invoices and *now* play with TF, as well as open up CAD files in 2d/3d and review, manipulate, etc.